Princess

Tennyson's most audacious narrative poem begins with a radical premise: a princess who rejects the world of men entirely and founds an isolated university where women pursue knowledge free from male interference. When the prince to whom she was betrothed in infancy infiltrates her kingdom disguised as a student, accompanied by two friends equally in drag, the poem becomes a glittering comedy of errors. But beneath the wit lies something stranger and more serious. As the prince is discovered, as war comes to the princess's gates, as wounded men lie in the women's hospital and the princess herself tends to the enemy she once spurned, Tennyson asks what might happen if women were truly free to define themselves. The poem refuses easy answers. It is part satire, part romance, part meditation on education and power, and entirely beguiling. For readers who believe Victorian poetry cannot surprise them, The Princess proves them wrong.